


Welcome Home, Mia.

by Coffin Liqueur (HP_Lovecats)



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Bittersweet, F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Game: Resident Evil 7, Guilt, Light Angst, Post-Canon, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Short One Shot, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:48:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26636860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HP_Lovecats/pseuds/Coffin%20Liqueur
Summary: Maybe I've been here before♫I've seen this room, I've walked this floor♫
Relationships: Ethan Winters/Mia Winters
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	Welcome Home, Mia.

When Mia entered the door, memories bled forward through grays and blacks and wet, sludgy cool filling and clogging up her mind - melted through it, warm, to align with the sights and the sounds in front of her.

Her mind could have been playing tricks on her - she wouldn’t know whether or not it was, whether or not it could be. Especially not anymore. (Better, right - she’d been cured. God, being anywhere else, anywhere not there -- ...still felt like she was bumbling through dreaming about it -- ) 

But something vague, if nothing else, connected enough. Something different enough, to send her mind spinning through _deja vu_ , edges of sights blurring and spinning as, half-consciously, she trailed in after Ethan like one boat towed in after another.

It was recognition. _I know this place_ , and knowing it well enough to remember that so deep into your bones that it vibrated there in the dissonance between that and newness. Having been away for so long that it was strange, somewhere you felt that you shouldn’t know, shouldn’t remember and _yet -- …!_

...It felt like nothing had changed.

Her heart sped in confusion, between hair-tossing turns of her head; her ribcage ached around something warm.

It might have smelled a little cleaner than it had before she’d left. Perhaps that was in plain old contrast from the wet and thick and rotten air on the Bakers’ estate; maybe this was only out of it being less lived-in, without her - maybe Ethan’d been spending less time at home. (In the center of that ache and warmth was a _stab_.)

She knew the time of day by heart, from the mix of the angles of the light-shafts through the window and the patterns that it put in the dim light, with the shutters half-closed - and the subtle orange-golden glow it gave the walls, and the wood of the furniture, and the knick-knacks on the shelves. Her and Ethan’s favorite books and movies, a decorative clock and wedding gifts from her parents and his siblings, little framed photographs from vacations and holidays and nights that had just seemed special, at the time, and still did to think about.

She remembered those photos as her eye skimmed over them just the way she remembered that all of these were natural surroundings to her, and remembered that they were smiling, and remembered the nights and days they’d been taken on.

Ethan hadn’t moved any of them.

The ache tightened.

The stab twisted and deepened.

One more toss of her head in a more specific search for something - she looked up at him, mouth half-open, puffing out a breath and uncertain if her question showed on her face.

The slightest tug of her hand against his.

They slowed to a stop, before the window. Half-began to turn to face each other.

She did want to stop and… catch her breath, so to speak. Refocus her attention around him. He made a good grounding point.

Almost _dutifully_ , he did.

He shifted his weight from side to side, with turns that she could move with. Ride, like it was a steady, natural dance. She knew what he was doing without a signal - her other hand lifting to slip into his where they met in the middle.

“Welcome home, Mia,” he said - face steady and almost stony.

Another thing she knew the full of all too well: the smallest thin and lift of the line of half of his mouth.

The sense of further fullness and a heater-like warmth under the lowness and softness and subtle flutter of his voice.

What she didn’t know was what her face was saying.

Only how it felt as her eyes narrowed and lips pursed thin and trembled in trying to shut something back before --

...when she fell forward, it was knocked out of her as an abashed _laugh_.

Only half-happy.

She smiled openly, with her face pressed to his chest, even as the rest of her face twisted, at the tightening of the screws in that ache.

Securing her arms tight against something so warm and stable and _there_ , fingers catching and tugging in the fabric of his shirt.

Continuing to turn with him.

Ripplingly-strong pounds of her heart in time with repetitions of that dull-yet-twisting stab.

Thinking “am I?” for the second time since either of them had left the ship, and wanting this time to laugh more sincerely and more bitterly at her own uncertainty on the matter.

This time as to whether or not it was quite time to say “thank you”.

**Author's Note:**

> Written using the [One Word Prompts](https://towriteprompts.tumblr.com/onewordprompts) from towriteprompts @ Tumblr!
> 
> Word 4: "Resurface".


End file.
